James Taylor II (1675 - abt. 1729)

Born 14 Mar 1675 in New Kent, New Kent County, Colony and Dominion of Virginia [uncertain]

Descendants

Died about 26 Jun 1729 at about age 54 in Spotsylvania (later Orange) County, Colony and Dominion of Virginia [uncertain]

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Ancestor of Zachary Taylor 12th US President

Biography

James II is assumed to have been born in New Kent Co., Virginia, since that is where his father is first found on record in the Colonies in 1675. ^[1] He died in that portion of Spotsylvania Co. that was formed from King and Queen Co. and later became Orange Co.

The following narrative, written in 2001, is taken from Jouett Taylor Prisley's family history and genealogy papers. ^[2]

James and Martha built a house in 1722 on the western frontier of Virginia slightly east of Orange. As of 2015, it still exists in prime restored order, furnished with period antiques, and privately owned, but not occupied, by a descendant of James II, along with thousands of acres of Orange County, approximating the original Taylor land grant. More than one-third of Orange County was still called, in the latter 1900s “the Taylor District,” and so marked on maps.

James and Martha had nine children, the few eldest not born there at Bloomsbury but most reared there: ^[3]

1. Frances, b. 1700, m. Amrose Madison, d. 1761 - their son James Sr. m. Nelly Conway, and their son was Pres. James Madison.
2. Martha: b. 1702, m. Thomas Chew, d. 1786 - they had eight children, and their grandson Thomas Chew (1777-1846), held Captain Lawrence of the frigate Chesapeake as he died, saying "Don't give up the ship!"
3. James III, b. 1703, d. 1784, m. Alice (Thornton) Catlett and two others, inherited Bloomsbury
4. Joseph Zachary, b. 1707, m. Elizabeth Lee, d. 1768 - built the Taylor home Meadowfarm, grandson was Pres. Zachary Taylor, and granddaughter Sarah m. Confederate President Jefferson Davis
5. George, b. 1711, m. Rachel Gibson, d. 1792, built the Taylor home Midland and had 11 sons, all but one of whom served in the Revolution.
6. Tabitha, b. 1713, m. Thomas Wylde / Wild
7. Erasmus, b. 1715, m. Jane Moore, d. 1794, inherited the Taylor home Greenfileld
8. Hannah, b. 1718, m. Nicholas Bataille
9. Mildred, b. 1724, m. Richard Thomas

NOTE: There is an additional daughter, Margaret Taylor, listed on many family trees but, due to the fact that she is not listed in the Taylor family Bible and her birth does not "fit within the other children, She has been removed as a daughter.

Each grew to adulthood and married. James and Martha had the unrivaled distinction of being great-grandparents of two U.S. Presidents: James Madison, “Father of the Constitution,” and Zachary Taylor, hero of Palo Alto, Monterey, and Buena Vista in the Mexican War. James and Martha would also become great-great grandparents of the first wife Sarah Knox Taylor of the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. She died of cholera (or malaria) early in their marriage and had no children.

James II was the only surviving son of his father James I and first wife, whose name we do not know (but who is often claimed to be Frances Walker). James II was six and his sister Sarah four when their mother died. Two years later, James’s father married again and had four more surviving children. James II would have been 24 when his father died, and 25 when he married Martha in 1699.

James was a man of good reputation, and of substance, both in wealth and intellect. He was colonel of a militia regiment; from 1702 to 1714, he was a member of the House of Burgesses from King and Queen County; in 1704 he owned 4,000 acres in St. Stephen’s Parish of New Kent County, where he was a vestryman; he was Surveyor General of the Colony of Virginia; and he at times also served as Sheriff and Justice of the Peace. Charles Campbell mentions James II as “a kindly man, opposed to the persecution of dissenters,” primarily Baptists.^[4]

In locating the county lines for Spotsylvania, Caroline, and Orange counties, Taylor was able to acquire a baronial estate (in land) of approximately one-third of Orange County, called the ”Taylor District.” Trained and licensed at William and Mary, James was one of two surveyors for Spotsylvania County. About the time of his death, James II's son, James III, received a court order to return his father’s plat book. Much later the first survey book of Caroline County turned up in the Clerk of Court’s office in Campbell County, Kentucky, apparently taken there by a migrating Taylor.

In 1715, James presented an impressive sundial to “the Upper Church of St. Stephen’s Parish,” in New Kent Co. It was bronze, octagonal, measuring 14 inches across the face and bearing a gift inscription from said donor to recipient. The maker, John Bowen, and the place, Bristol, England, are identified, and the latitude of its original location, “38 degrees, 00.” When the church was abandoned in 1800, the sundial was removed to safekeeping by a family of the parish. Heirs of that family, 125 years later, restored the piece to the Episcopal Diocese of Richmond where it was mounted on the lawn of Mayo Memorial Church House, diocesan headquarters since 1926. It was then removed from Richmond in 1955, and at some time later was installed in an appropriately historic setting at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in King and Queen County.

James was one of 63 men chosen to accompany Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood in 1716 for the Tramontane Expedition. Purposing to track headwaters of Virginia’s rivers, claim land for the Crown, name and chart geographical sites and observe Indian tribes, Spotswood dubbed his men “Knights of the Golden Horseshoe,” and on ending their travel, presented them with symbolic certificates and watch chain emblems of gold and diamonds in the shape of a horseshoe. An expedition log kept by Lt. John Fontaine tells of the country’s great beauty, and named the only hazards as the occasional bees or snakes.^{[5] [6]}

Authorities in Williamsburg have cited Bloomsbury as the house farthest west in the colony of Virginia at the time it was built between 1720-1722. They also think the original porch, framed into the structure, may be the earliest such architecture known to survive in Virginia. As of the 1990s, the little home was beautifully preserved and accommodated visits by James's descendants through the owner Helen Marie Taylor.

At the time Bloomsbury was under construction Taylor was 48 and he and Martha had eight children, from 22 down to four years. Eldest daughters Frances and Martha were still at home, engaged to be married. The ninth child, Mildred was born two years after the family occupied their new home.

Some years before James II’s death he presented Bloomsbury to his eldest son, James III, and at the same time provided adjacent 1,000 acre parcels for his sons Zachary, George, and Erasmus. Estimates vary on when James II gave Bloomsbury to his eldest son, James III, but it was probably in 1722, seven years before James II's death.

James and Martha are buried at Greenfield.

Research Notes

The dates of birth and death for James Taylor "the Younger" are recorded differently in a Taylor family Bible and in a Taylor family tree:

• Taylor family tree: b. 1674, d. 1729 ^[7]
• Taylor family bible: b. 14 Mar 1675, d. 23rd Jany. 1730 ^[8]

The James Taylor I Descendants Association uses dates from an Ancestry.com source listed as "The Colburn Family of Dedham" that match the years on the linen family tree: b. 14 Mar 1674, d. 23 Jun 1729. ^[9]

It appears probable that the difference between the two sets of dates is attributable to the change in 1752 from the "old style" Julian calendar to the "new style" Gregorian calendar,^[10] along with a transposition of the month of death from "Jan" to "Jun" (or vice-versa). The family tree dates of 1674-1729 indicate that it was written before 1752 or perhaps soon after using sources with the O.S. dates; and the family Bible was started after 1752 using the N.S. dates. It seems more likely that James died in January, which would account for the difference in the O.S./N.S. year of death. Had he died in June, the O.S. and N.S. years would have been the same since the O.S. new year occurred on March 25th.

Sources

1. ↑ Our Family Tree: James Taylor, Jr., by Orville Boyd, 18 Jan 2012
2. ↑ Jouett Taylor Prisley family history and genealogy papers in the possession of Frederic Arnett Prisley, citing: William Espy's papers on the Taylor family; The First Settlers of Orange County, Virginia, by Ulysses P. Joyner, Jr.; Campbell's History of the Colony and Ancient Domain of Virginia; W. W. Scott's History of Orange County, Virginia; William Kyle Anderson's Genealogy of the Robertson and Taylor Families, Detroit, 1900; and articles from the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
3. ↑ Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, by The Virginia Historical Society, Vol. XXX (1922), Richmond, reprinted by Kraus Corp., New York: 1968, pp. 387-388
4. ↑ Campbell, Charles, “History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia,” J. B. Lippencott, Philadelphia, 1860
5. ↑ Joyner, Ulysses P., "The First Settlers of Orange County, Virginia," Orange County Historical Society, 2003
6. ↑ Scott, William Wallace, "History of Orange County, Virginia," Everett Waddey Co., 1907
7. ↑ James Taylor I Descendants Association: The Taylor Family Tree (on linen), by Steve Taylor
8. ↑ Library of Virginia Online Catalog: Taylor family Bible record, 1668-1906
9. ↑ Our Family Tree: James Taylor, Jr., by Orville Boyd, 18 Jan 2012
10. ↑ Wikipedia: Old Style and New Style Dates

See also:

• Historic Taylor Family Homes in Orange County, Virginia, 1722-Present
• FamilySearch Tree
• "Taylors In the Making of a Nation", by Alice Elizabeth Trabue, Taylor Family Association Historian, 17 Oct 1925, published in Yearbook of The Taylor Family Association, 1924-1926, Frankfort, Kentucky, pp. 16-20
• [https://www.wikitree.com/photo.php/f/f2/Taylor-678-1.pdf "A MEMORIAL IN RICHMOND To Col. James Taylor II. Restoration of James Taylor Sun dial to the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia", by The Taylor Family Association Committee on the James Taylor Sun Dial, published in Yearbook of The Taylor Family Association, 1924-1926, Frankfort, Kentucky, pp. 23-25
• "Family Tree," database, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org : modified 20 March 2018, 13:23), entry for James Walker Taylor II(PID https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/4:1:K85B-19H); contributed by various users.

See also:

• James Taylor I (the elder), by James Taylor I Descendants Association
• Brewer, Mary Taylor, “From Log Cabins to the White House,” M.T. Brewer, Publisher, Virginia, 1985 [use with caution - this reference is un-sourced and contains errors]
• A Crane's Foot (or Pedigree) of Branches of the Gregg, Stuart, Robertson, Dobbs and Allied Families, E. Stuart Gregg /dsrobertson, 1975, page 221
• Espy, Willard, Papers on the Taylor Family
• Miller, Ann L., “Antebellum Orange,” Orange County Historical Society, 1988
• FamilySearch Tree

Acknowledgements

• Thank you to Bob Nichol for creating WikiTree profile Taylor-12604 through the import of Willis.ged on Mar 8, 2013.
• Taylor-21710 was created by Amy Wilson through the import of 2014_MASTER.ged on Sep 24, 2014.
• Edmund West, comp.. "James Taylor Taylor," Family Data Collection - Individual Records [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2000.URL: https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=4725&h=2531665&tid=&pid=&usePUB=true&_phsrc=GvC144&_phstart=successSource. Accessed 23 Apr 2018 by Patricia Prickett Hickin.
• John Martin imported the data for James Taylor from Harter-Martin-Tammany Family Tree_2013-11-10.ged on 22 Nov 2013.